if we talk about roma, milano, other areas in the south and big cities, or cities with a big university its different, and sounds like aba shanti, shaka and the other famous dub-roots sounds can fill any venue.
there are a lot of italian sounds, most of them in the dancehall style, but roots sounds are growing

but here, north-east of italy theres maybe 1 big sound, playing dancehall/bashment, and to use their full sound found a venue at about 200km from home.

i have a recording somewhere iration steppas came to italy and played on one of the local soundsystems cant remember the name of the sound tho

Could be us, was our sound promoting and powering recently them in more than 1 session. I know we are not in use to make big propaganda of ourselves as others in the past did, but we are a roots sound since 1999 in Roma, with preamp, selection, boxes, wires etc and works for the roots biz promotion since the beginning should remember our cameras pointed on you this year russ

True there's a few sound culture here, I mean musicwise and physically regarding wood+speakers. True bashment is the biggest scene here. Full of crews, but few sounds. People gets mad for commercial dubplates even if they will play it onto a weak PA. And massive get mad for the same music. Generally, poor music curiosity in terms of what's new could be around. The ratio between JA bashment/roots could be 10:1. But things are quite growing. New sound are borning right now, people starts to buy preamps and asks for scoopbinz projects. Some people wants the roots back. Tired of the entertainment side of the bashment biz most of all. They wants message music. And we are happy to feed this people!

one love was a roots sound. Still respect them and has to give them the thanks to have the possibility to check a proper sound system in my area. And nice people too. Originator in the whole Italy long time ago.

just pick up this occasion to introduce us here, bless & respect to all...

where you one of the bredrins i met at slayen one time few years back?

Not me personally but maybe someone of our crew, things looks to match...scoops included...
was a "clash" between mark iration and steve vibronics in roma, nice and raaam session, our scoops didn't survive after 6 honoured years of activity but it was more a speakers obsolescence thing associated to the fact that the yard was full of people and our speakers push too much that night...things that could happens with a soundsystem. just a soundbwoy knows...

russ d wrote:have used various pre-amps including my big old barracuda, jts 3 and 4 way pre-amps, and my custom mostec mini pre-amp, all of which are mono... i just use a simple mono - stereo adaptor to go from the pre-amp to the club system, connecting either via di box (which the club will have) into the systems main mixer , or simply connecting to a spare channel on a dj mixer that might be used by another dj on the set... its easy and it works with no particular problems.

I've been rereading this thread as I'm thinking of building up a sound. I hadn't thought about these preamps being mono, but it made sense once you said it. That being said, I feel like a system could really be missing something if you were bumping in mono. I know that a lot of reggae isn't in stereo, but some of it is. Lately, I've been playing around with mixes where I'm running one track in the left channel, and another version in the right channel, creating a soundscape in between the two different mix downs of a track, each panned hard to one side. If you're listening with your headphones on, you're getting entirely different recordings of a track in each ear, which highlights the subtle differences in the way the engineer put down each run of the tape. The thing I really want to hear for these hard split mixes is what they would sound like on a proper soundsystem, with slight differences coming from the two sides of the room. Seems like when you're moving that much sound the effect of hearing one thing from one side of the room and another thing from another side of the room could be one of the most powerful effects on the crowd (along with your eq sweeps and sound effects).

I've been looking at these JTS and Mostec preamps, and I guess I'd have to get two of them if I wanted to run a stereo mix? Most amps are stereo, so I could still do my four way split? If I'm looking for a four way preamp for soundsystem business, are there any stereo ones?

Here's an example of the left/right bizness I'm talking about. Run it inna dance!!

After finishing up reading the thread and thinking about it a bit more, if stereo was an issue, could you just use a four way preamp, set one channel as your bass, one channel as your highs, and use the two remaining channels for a stereo mid? That way you'd get most of the separation between the mids, and the bass and crisp highs wouldn't be as important for the separation in a noisy space.

Or, does the preamp have two ins (L/R) that are turned to mono straight away and you never have the chance to route what goes to the four separate channels?